


vortoscope

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Ambiguous Relationships, Bodyguard Krennic, Empress Jyn Erso, F/M, Force-Sensitive Jyn Erso, Loyalty, Pay No Attention To The Altered Timeline Behind The Curtain, Playing Fast And Loose With Established Worldbuilding, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-06 02:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8731255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: The Force crackles, shivering the way a person might if they touched their tongue to a broken tooth. Sharp and hot, before abating to a manageable throb. His face betrays nothing, so neutral that she almost distrusts her own senses as a result. But no. No. She’s not wrong. She’s never wrong.
Her leg slips off the throne, foot stamping against the marble. She leans forward, elbows against her knees. “You’re lying.” Her mind hones in on him, an awl ready to prick a hole in the fabric that holds him together. She could break him to get the truth from him if she wanted to. But she doesn’t. Because knowing she could is enough. Tilting her head, she narrows her eyes. Flat, she asks, “Why?”





	

“Sergeant,” Jyn says, brushing against the black wool of said sergeant’s uniform—genuine wool, grown in the agricultural district of Imperial Center, saved for the people who serve Jyn from the palace simply because she prefers it to the synthetic fabrics favored elsewhere—dancing her fingertips up his arm to squeeze his shoulder. It’s a silly gesture, she’s aware, as he has more than a few inches on her and this merely exaggerates the difference, but the way his eyes snap to her hand makes it worth it. “Might I have a moment of your time?”

He says nothing for a moment, glances around the otherwise empty throne room as though expecting an assassin to strike at any moment. Or an overzealous senator believing his continued existence is due to his own political prowess rather than Jyn’s magnanimity. Both are threats to his eyes. Both are nuisances to hers.

“Do you consider me a distraction from your duties?” Her steps echo against the pale marble and that echo syncopates as she scrapes her boots’ heels in counterpoint. Then she tsks because she can and because his eyes flash when she does it and because she likes it when he clenches his jaw just so. “Krennic. Do you think of nothing except security?”

He swallows and narrows his eyes, glances away, which only serves to highlight the tightness around his jaw, the way the muscles in his cheek jump slightly. He is angry; Jyn can sense it, revels in it. On any given day, she might flip a chit to decide whether this is the moment she wants him to crack or not.

She wonders if he knows. And wonders if that just makes him angrier.

But as she rounds his back, raking her nails across the collar of his uniform, she stops. And waits. And releases her curiosity to the Force.

“I wouldn’t be here if I did,” he replies, his voice a little sharper than Jyn typically likes from her subordinates, “Empress.”

But there is nothing typical about Jyn and her reactions to Krennic. And she happens to enjoy his minor insubordinations. They keep things interesting. And Jyn likes nothing more than interesting things—

And interesting people. Not that she would say as much to him. But he’s a smart man.

He’s probably figured it out already anyway.

“No, your dedication is admirable.” And if he will not allow her that moment she wants from him, she will take it where he stands. “So admirable that you haven’t sat the Imperial Officer’s exam.”

“I—”

“For the third time.” Her heels click as she finishes her circuit around his body and comes to a stop before him. Tilting her chin up to better address him, she adds, “In as many years. Tell me, did my father never question you about this?” It’s a loaded question, this one is, but one she considers important anyway. The less, generally, said about the late Emperor—well may he rest in the Force—the better.

He says nothing, searching her face for an answer she will not give. She wants to know why and she wants to get him off-balance and she wants to know what he holds inside of him that keeps him from succeeding when she knows full well he ought to be one of her grand admirals, one of her directors of special projects, something more than the glorified bodyguard he’s become—a man who could technically be ordered around by just about any officer who might see fit to try it.

Not that they’ve tried it so far. But one never knows. Some of them do consider their rank a shield and with shields come daring and with daring comes… incidents.

The point is: he’s hit a ceiling. She doesn’t trust people who don’t claw at those ceilings. Not when, like Krennic, they’ve already clawed through so much else in their lives. Even the cowards claw toward higher rungs of power, pressured by their peers and superiors and subordinates alike to do so.

Why not him?

“You lied about your age to get into the stormtrooper program, back when few non-clones were allowed to enlist and none over the age of eighteen were even considered, and you somehow received a commendation from Commander Cody of all people for acts of valor against the Separatists. You joined the Coruscant Guard for a time and protected the finest politicians the fallen Republic could produce given its corruption and when that wasn’t enough, when my father had to leverage his power against an even greater villain, you became one of his prized death troopers faster than anyone else at the time or since. And now you’re here. After all that. Doing nothing.”

“As flattering as I find your incomplete recitation of my record,” he replies, “I’m already well aware of my accomplishments.”

“And yet, you’ve stagnated. I find that surprising.” She purses her lips, well aware of the reputation such expressions of displeasure have earned her in the past.

That, at least, gets a smile out of him—as twisted and self-deprecating as it might be. “I wouldn’t call protecting the empress anything less than the highest honor an individual could achieve,” he says, “but perhaps an enlisted man like myself doesn’t know any better.”

“And that’s just it.” She crosses her arms and brushes past him, strides toward her throne, that ridiculous chair that means nothing to her and yet everything to everyone she comes into contact with except, perhaps, Krennic, who has seen too much of it to stand in awe. All but throwing herself onto it, she drapes her leather-clad leg over the arm. Krennic, of course, turns to face her, hands folded behind his back. She doesn’t have to see it to know he’s formed a fist with one and circled it with the other, black gloves tightening across his knuckles. “I have less competent ‘enlisted men’ serving as advisors and leaders in my military now who started where you did and made less of themselves during that time.”

She doesn’t allow herself any pleasure at the thought that he believes serving as her bodyguard is a high honor. But she doesn’t lie to herself either—if anyone else had said the same, they might well find themselves fielding a high priority assignment to the nearest ice planet. For telling lies, for trying to curry favor, for believing Jyn a fool or worse, for believing her naïve. She did not end up the fist that holds the Empire in check by being either of those things. And her Empire will not fall because she refused to punish sycophants for slavering at the ground beneath her feet.

This, she finds herself furious to admit, is why she’s so determined to figure out why he hasn’t moved on. Not least because she _wants_ him higher up the chain of command.

The corner of his mouth lifts in a twitching smirk, there and gone, too small to be anything but deliberate. And not so large as to show true distaste. The line he walks is a thin one and she finds herself willing to allow him this freedom—for nothing if not the novelty of it.

“Would you care to explain?” she prompts, bouncing the knee hanging from the symbolic seat of power beneath her. The back of her boot taps against its sleek, metallic surface. _Thunk thunk thunk_.

“I believe I already have,” he says, staring at a spot over Jyn’s shoulder. Probably he’s focused on the glitter of Imperial Center’s constant traffic out of the transparisteel window behind her. That’s what Jyn looks at when she has to remember the enormity of her task before her and the breadth of power required to realize it. It’s a humbling view and an inspiring one. She has no idea what strength _he_ might draw from it, though, if any. Perhaps he merely thinks of it as a flaw in her security and nothing more. Perhaps it is only a thing that grates at him.

“Honor,” she repeats, thin disbelief tinging the word with skepticism. “You would truly make that your answer?”

“I have no other.” But something in the way he says it…

The Force crackles, shivering the way a person might if they touched their tongue to a broken tooth. Sharp and hot, before abating to a manageable throb. His face betrays nothing, so neutral that she almost distrusts her own senses as a result. But no. No. She’s not wrong. She’s never _wrong_.

Her leg slips off the throne, foot stamping against the marble. She leans forward, elbows against her knees. “You’re lying.” Her mind hones in on him, an awl ready to prick a hole in the fabric that holds him together. She could break him to get the truth from him if she wanted to. But she doesn’t. Because knowing she could is enough. Tilting her head, she narrows her eyes. Flat, she asks, “Why?”

She’ll give him this much: he doesn’t flinch at the tone of her voice. And _his_ voice, when he speaks, is as steady as ever. “It’s not a lie.”

She could play this game all day. And for once, she has the time. But even so, she does not want to play. “It’s not the truth.” Springing to her feet, she steps toward him again, drawn back to him despite herself.

His head tilts down as she approaches, his eyes following her the whole way, hungry for something. “That’s not the same thing at all,” he says, a smirk playing at the corner of his foolish mouth.

_It is to me_. “Are you really splitting hairs right now? With me?”

“Not in the slightest.” Somehow his posture straightens to an even greater degree. If Jyn were a more caring person, she’d worry about the state of his back. “But I prefer accuracy in all things. As you do.”

_This isn’t accuracy,_ she thinks. _It’s obfuscation_. She reaches out to him, her palm pressing against his tunic to feel the beat of his heart against her hand, the even, slow thud of it growing quicker beneath her touch. “Come now, Krennic,” she says, sweet in a cajoling way. Or perhaps cajoling in a sweet way. “Do you realize how much good you could do me with a few more rank squares on your chest? You could be my most trusted…” She pulls away, disgusted. Here she is, practically begging. Begging. Her. She who could _order_ him to do her bidding.

Why hasn’t she?

With a sharp motion, almost too fast to catch, he grasps her by the elbow, brings her arm back toward him. Brings her back toward him.

And now it’s _her_ heart that beats too quickly.

“Am I not already ‘your most trusted?’” he asks, an edge in his voice that she finds nearly impossible to ignore.

Though ignore it she does. Enough to pass muster with him anyway. She doesn’t answer him though. But apparently that’s answer enough, because he smiles smugly—a not unattractive look for him—and nods.

“And that’s why I don’t sit the officer’s exam. Why should I when I’m already as close to you as I can be?” His eyes scan the room, serious, determined. “I already know nearly everything there is to know about you. You’ve _let_ me know nearly everything about you. What can a new rank give me that you haven’t already?”

Her throat going dry, she swallows and presses herself just that little bit closer. “You overstep your bounds, Sergeant.”

“Perhaps,” he says, head tilting in a slight side-to-side motion, but otherwise pretending he’s not affected. “But you asked.”

“So I did,” she replies, putting distance between them. It isn’t as though she hasn’t thought about it before, letting him in on that last part of her life that he hasn’t been privy to. But the anticipation has always been more delicious than her need for follow through. Now, she’s beginning to wonder. And maybe one day, she will do more than wonder, though today is not that day.

“Besides,” he continues as though nothing has changed. “I would rather be here than lord it over your scrabbling, squabbling retinue of advisors.” Grinning, a little malicious, he adds, “You handle them so well already after all. It would be a redundancy if I were to step in.”

“You do so hate redundancies. And you attempt to flatter me,” she replies, pleased despite herself, though her voice remains cold. For plausible deniability if for no other reason. “Very well, Sergeant. Consider me satisfied. I shall not ask you about the exam again.”

He inclines his head. “Thank you, Empress. You have my eternal gratitude on that score.”

Grinning privately—for him alone, the smile thrown at him over her shoulder as she retreated to her throne yet again—she said, “Remember that the next time I do something you consider foolhardy.”

He doesn’t answer her, merely resumes his usual position, but there’s a glint in his eye, for what is possible perhaps, for the future, for what they have now, for the answer she knows is ringing around in his head. _So, as soon as I turn around_ _, then?_

It’s not love, exactly. She knows that. But what Krennic offers to her instead?

It’s better than love.


End file.
